On Monday, ahead of Madhya Pradesh state assembly elections, The Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) issued a diktat to poll ticket aspirants to have a Facebook page with at least 15,000 likes and 5000 followers on Twitter, and it has also asked its party members to be a part of many Whatsapp groups of booth-level workers. The candidates are also required to like and share tweets and posts of the party’s official Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) writes in a letter to ticket aspirants, 'candidates in upcoming polls must have 15,000 likes on their FB page, 5000 followers on Twitter,& a WhatsApp group of booth-level workers.They must like&retweet every post on MPCC's twitter account' pic.twitter.com/tvrh9aAVJp
— ANI (@ANI) September 3, 2018
The Congress party is employing the same strategy as employed by its arch-rival BJP. One of the main reasons behind BJP’s success in elections is a strong social media presence of its candidates. And now, the Congress party has also started taking social media very seriously. The party has asked all the aspirants to submit details of their social media accounts to the MPCC’s IT cell by 15 September.
However, the moot question- Is good social media presence enough to ensure victory in the elections? The answer is NO. If a person is active on social media, it doesn’t mean that a person is also connected with the people. Real connection with the people is the most significant factor at the grass-root level which most of the Congress leaders lack. The practice of paid likes and paid followers is rampant on social media. Especially on Twitter using bots for re-tweet or fake followers is used by almost all the parties and many political leaders. The Congress Party President Rahul Gandhi himself uses bots on Twitter. In fact, many credit his recent resurgence on Twitter to bots of foreign origin.
In recent times, social media has become an important deciding factor in Indian elections but social media alone is not enough to secure victory in the elections. Social media is no match for groundwork. In Madhya Pradesh, under the leadership of CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, BJP has done excellent work at the grass root level. With a large number of followers, the Congress party could only manage to win Twitter trend hashtag battle not assembly elections. For elections, they must have something promising to offer to the people of the state. Except for anti-Modi rant they don’t have anything else.
As far as the presence on social media is concerned, BJP is way ahead of Congress in that as well. At the National level, the Congress is nowhere even near the social media strength of the BJP. The story is very similar at the state level as well. For example in June, BJP’s IT cell head for Madhya Pradesh, Shivraj Singh Dabi, had announced that the party has employed 65,000 ‘cyber warriors’ for the upcoming elections against the team of 4,000 people of the Congress known as ‘Rajiv ke Sipahi’ (soldiers of Rajiv Gandhi). At that time, the Congress’ IT cell chief for MP, Dharmendra Bajpai, had said that WhatsApp would be the party’s biggest weapon for the upcoming elections.
According to daily hunt news report, Chief Election Commission, O.P. Rawat, has assured that any circulation of false content on social media will be dealt with strictly. He also said that a committee of cyber experts has been established in order to keep a check on the circulation of offensive and fake information, and politicians sharing any sort of fake information on social media will be banned.
